The imminent collapse of the Khmer Rouge does not end the questions, of course.
Two other key Khmer Rouge figures are thought to be dead but may still be at large.
Hun Sen had asked the world body in 1997 to help find justice for the Khmer Rouge's atrocities.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | CAMBODIA: Will Justice Ever be Served?
Concerted pressure from aid donors would win his co-operation, however reluctant, in bringing Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.
Sihanouk later condemned the Khmer Rouge for the deaths of the Cambodians, including of several of his own children.
There is no evidence linking him to Khmer Rouge atrocities in the 1970s.
The Vietnamese quickly overthrew the Khmer Rouge, who fled back into the jungle.
" A clearly impressed foreign observer remarks: "This shows Cambodia has traveled a fair distance since the end of Khmer Rouge rule.
For years the Khmer Rouge could be blamed for much of the illicit trade, which they used to bankroll their guerrilla operations.
Aside from the defectors, there aren't many other Khmer Rouge leaders left.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | CAMBODIA: Will Justice Ever be Served?
Since then, the U.N. has maintained offices in Phnom Penh, and has called for a special court to try detained Khmer Rouge bigwigs.
Next, his soldiers captured Ta Mok, the last Khmer Rouge commander who had not defected, and announced that national courts would try him.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | CAMBODIA: Will Justice Ever be Served?
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal will soon be facing an even greater challenge - the trial of the organisation's four most senior surviving former leaders.
Though most Khmer Rouge leaders are living in Pailin, a border town where the government's grip is tenuous, they no longer have an army.
The Pilika case has overshadowed the drawn-out international effort to set up a tribunal for the Khmer Rouge, and the role played by the U.N.
Sihanouk was at the centre of complex negotiations involving royalists, the Khmer Rouge and Hun Sen, the Vietnamese-backed prime minister, to form a new government.
Cambodia has made impressive progress in reconstructing its educational system which was completely destroyed during the brutal years of Khmer Rouge rule, between 1975 and 1979.
"If the court can bring this (the Khmer Rouge) case to justice it will prove it can work, " said Youk Chhang, director of a human rights center.
In a bitterly ironic twist, many foreign observers argue that Cambodia is still incapable of mounting a properly constituted local tribunal for Pol Pot's surviving Khmer Rouge lieutenants.
The country is preparing to try other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, including its former military chief, Ta Mok, and its main executioner, Kang Kek Ieu, known as Duch.
Also treated with respect was former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, who received a limited royal pardon in 1996 and now lives peacefully in Pailin in western Cambodia.
These and other questions are set to take on much greater significance next month when a draft law on the tribunal for the Khmer Rouge is sent for parliamentary approval.
This proposal not only seeks to deny the murderous Khmer Rouge a return to power, but would require the withdrawal of all foreign forces and the holding of free elections.
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In recent days, Phnom Penh has been pounding the bases of the hardline holdouts of the Khmer Rouge (remember them?) in the north, close to the porous border with Thailand.
In 1996, Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk pardoned Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary for his role in the "killing fields" era of the 1970s when about a million Cambodians were slain.
Duch, the first former Khmer Rouge leader to stand trial, has admitted his role in the regime's genocidal reign and on Tuesday expressed sorrow for his actions before the tribunal.
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About time too, in the view of those who wonder why the misdeeds of the former Khmer Rouge regime have taken so long to be examined in a court of law.
ECONOMIST: Justice is slow to catch up with the former Khmers Rouges
There is no suggestion that the court's judges or lawyers -- who are hearing and presenting the case against the former Khmer Rouge leaders -- are involved in the alleged corruption.
On July 26th in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, will hear his sentence as former commandant of Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge prison which 14, 000 entered and barely a dozen left.
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